Whitman Stories

Venerable Thubten Chodron, an American Buddhist teacher and monastic leader, will deliver the keynote address at the multi-faith Baccalaureate Ceremony as part of Whitman College's 2024 Commencement activities.

Pavel Blagov, Professor of Psychology and Director of Whitman’s Personality Lab, mentors students as they make connections between memory and personality while making meaningful connections in the Whitman and Walla Walla communities.

Whitman College senior Sueli Gwiazdowski ’24 has been selected as a James C. Gaither Junior Fellow of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Whitman College sophomore Talia Lorincz ’26 received the British Columbia Medal of Good Citizenship, the second highest award offered in the Canadian province, for her service to Ukrainian refugees. She started a free store in her basement to provide clothing and household items.

With a combination of film screenings, tribal speakers, cultural performances, traditional salmon bake, and ceremonies, the Salmon Film Festival is designed to educate, inspire and celebrate the heritage of regional Indigenous communities. All festival events, taking place April 12 and 13, on Whitman’s campus, are free and open to the public.

A new baseball clubhouse—the Edwards-Moore Clubhouse at Borleske Stadium— opened to the Whitman College Blues and Walla Walla Sweets on Saturday, April 6, 2024 following a dedication ceremony that celebrated generous donors and the progress of Whitman Athletics. A photo gallery includes images of the ceremony and highlights of the new, vibrant facility.

Ben Parker ’23 was a star baseball player for the Whitman College Blues and continues to shine at the ballpark at William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, while also pursuing his MBA. At Whitman, he lead the team in batting average, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, runs scored, home runs and RBI.

Whitman College’s 2023–2024 Visiting Writers Reading Series (VWRS) is closing out the academic year by hosting award-winning author and poet Maggie Nelson.

In a major step toward the Upward Together campaign’s goal of meeting the full financial need of every student, Whitman will provide a 1:1 match of college funds to scholarship-designated gifts of $50,000 or more.

Cat Posey ’05 uses her background as a Whitman College History major to tell the stories of women in technology. As the founder of Tech by Superwomen, Posey is a trailblazer who has made changes at CapitalOne as the Senior Director of Machine Learning and worked for the U.S. Digital Service, President Obama’s tech startup.

Two Whitman College juniors accepted into the Public Policy & International Affairs Program. They will spend the summer studying at top graduate schools. Kate Moe '25 is headed to Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan and Meron Semere ’25 will attend Heinz College at Carnegie Mellon University in Pennsylvania.

Associate Professor of Sociology Alvaro Santana-Acuña is one of the world’s foremost experts on Gabriel García Márquez, having written a study of the author’s most famous book (“One Hundred Years of Solitude”) as well as curated an international exhibition from García Márquez’s archives. This week, The New York Times published his guest essay discussing the controversy surrounding García Márquez’s new posthumously-published novel.